From the NYCI: Fall 2024

“I was very excited to learn about the Choreographic Institute,” says choreographer Moriah Evans. An artist, curator, Guggenheim Fellow, and dancemaker whose works have been performed around the world, Evans brings a richly conceptual approach to the studio, in addition to extensive training in a variety of dance vocabularies. “I'm coming from the experimental dance scene, or, if you want to call it, the downtown dance scene, but ballet has always been an important part of my history and practice. The thinking behind ballet, what ballet is and where it comes from, and its ideological tenets are always there, in every dance I make. It’s always part of my questions around, what is dance? What is a dance step? In creating a ballet, I was also thinking, how do you bring current social, political questions to that field? What are we doing while we're watching a concert dance, what are the urgent questions being staged? How do they connect to questions in the world today around embodiment, social structures, and identities?”

Set to two propulsive, experimental pieces by American postminimalist composer Elodie Lauten, Evans’ work for the Institute, titled The Wait, is imbued with, in her words, “a sense of anticipation” throughout its driving 13 minutes. Incorporating vernacular and pedestrian movements alongside classical ballet steps, The Wait reflects Evans’s broader theoretical concerns as well as an interest in the institutions of ballet itself, and how dancers interact with those institutions. “I wanted a relentless stream of activity,” she shares. “It was important to me to use all 12 dancers for the entire time. So, it's a bit like a machine. Once this machine starts, it doesn't stop, ever, until it's over, and everyone is part of it. Each spoke on the wheel matters. And, because this work is performed in a studio, it's like a study piece; the site of the studio is a space where there are relentless attempts again and again. So, I was also exploring the role of repetition within dance training, and the dancer’s body as a stage for the exchange between interiority and exteriority. Involving everyone in this interdependent way was a mechanism to manifest and invite those ideas.”

Between the large cast and the swift pace of the Institute session, “Every day was like an intense puzzle,” Evans recalls. “Every day it was like, ‘What is going to happen today, how is it going to manifest in the bodies of the dancers, and how am I going to structure the work and solve the problems of the piece, or the riddle of it, on a very condensed timeline?' I'm not as accustomed to working like that, with that degree of pressure, that many bodies, that little bit of time, but it was addictive.”

This isn't Keerati Jinakunwiphat's first experience with the Choreographic Institute, or New York City Ballet. After choreographing Impeccable Quake during the Institute's Fall 2021 Session, she was commissioned to create a new work on the company. The resulting piece, Fortuitous Ash, premiered in February 2023, set to two pieces by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun. The invitation to participate in this Fall 2024 Session represents the “continuity of care” NYCI Artistic Director Adrian Danchig-Waring views as key to the Institute’s mission. “I love being back at the Institute since my initial memories were so fond,” Jinakunwiphat says. Following the 2023 premiere, she has transitioned away from performing to focus more on her choreographic work. “It's such a great program that provides room to explore and play with these dancers. I am so grateful to Adrian for his continued support and having me return to this unique space."

Set to three pieces of current electronic music, Money Jungle, as with her previous works with NYCI and NYCB, combines Jinakunwiphat’s unique dance lexicon with her personal history. “I think the inspiration for the piece was riding the waves of life, in a way. I feel like I've been in a transitional year, which comes with its ups and downs, and I'm flowing through it all. I definitely wanted to push things a little more, be a little bolder, and take up more space. I’m a little more familiar with the world, so I wanted to see if I could take more risks and put more of myself and my language in and challenge the dancers.”

“It’s exciting in ways to discover new paths of freedom,” she reflects. “I feel like that's been a theme for me, I'm always in places where I’m trying to understand what it means to be free in the present moment. That relates to Fortuitous Ash and Impeccable Quake—these unsettled moments, or being in the midst of a shift, and how I choose to respond to that. I think Money Jungle is me, weaving my way back out into this world.”

“Wherever a dancer finds themselves in space, they are asked to recall—instantly and precisely—their expertise of épaulement, positioning their head and shoulders in decisively explicit torsions,” writes dancer and choreographer My’kal Stromile. In addition to performing a wide variety of works, Stromile has choreographed world premieres for Boston Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet, among others; but technique and ballet vocabulary are just part of the building blocks of his work with the Institute. “A gesture is never singular but exists in dialogue: one position moves to, through, on, or even off another, creating an architecture that redefines itself with every shift,” he writes. “Even the gaze must adjust, attuned to the mood or texture of the position. These subtle shifts ripple outward, binding movements into a cadence that feels at once classical, prescriptive in its observation of ballet rules, and newly unearthed. Form becomes a question, and the body answers it again and again, tracing lines that dissolve, reform, and linger.”

These questions and bodily answers inform Point Against Point, which begins with Stromile coaching or performing spoken word with the two dancers, then expands into something between a pas de deux and a conversation, developing into a delightful, productive exchange by the conclusion of its seven or so minutes. “Together with Taylor Stanley and Harrison Coll, I aimed to reexamine how fundamental classical principles are viewed and executed through the influence of text/spoken word, improvisation, and varying musical relationships as well as time, opposition, and the body’s natural impulses,” Stromile writes. “Because of the training, experience, and repertoire of the dancers, the analytical and physical approaches turned out to be exaggerations or minimizations of those necessities, commenting on how ballet’s codified language can be in conflict with itself and even the body (as the medium of expression) when apprehended by contemporary modalities.”

What has been the lasting impression of his time with the Institute for Stromile? “This Fall Session has prompted me with more questions to ask of this art form and perhaps puzzles to assemble. Or not!”